Dinah, ClinkShrink, & Roy produce Shrink Rap: a blog by Psychiatrists for Psychiatrists. A place to talk; no one has to listen.
All patient vignettes are confabulated; the psychiatrists, however, are mostly real.
--Topics include psychotherapy, humor, depression, bipolar, anxiety, schizophrenia, medications, ethics, psychopharmacology, forensic and correctional psychiatry, psychology, mental health, chocolate, and emotional support ducks. Don't ask. (It's not Shrink Wrap.)

Sunday, May 13, 2007

We had to do something a little different this week. We three shrinks were all busy ... Mother's Day weekend, yard work, Longwood Gardens, and luaus kept us too busy to get together to do a podcast. I insisted that we find a way to do it online, so I FINALLY convinced Dinah that even she could do it ;-)

Ten o'clock last night, it all came together, and we were able to do a podcast, thanks to Talkshoe. (If you haven't checked out Talkshoe, do it. It lets you podcast by phone!) As luck would have it, a storm came through and turned the transformer down the street into a Fourth of July celebration. Despite being without power, we still managed to get it done. Is that dedication, or what?

So, here ya go. It is a little rough, as we weren't sure what we were doing (what else is new?), and recording it via cell phone caused occasional lags and silent periods... hmm, just like psychotherapy.May 13, 2007: #20 Mother Talkshoe

Q&A: Zoe Brain asks "Is there a Standard of Care for GIDNOS in the case where the patient is intersexed? And does the degree of intersex affect the therapeutic regime, and if so, how? I'm familiar with the WPATH (Formerly HBIGDA) v6 SOC for GID. But once a diagnosis of GIDNOS is established, the SOC does not appear to apply."Answer: Huh? (We did the best we could.) Also, see Farmer v. Brennan.

APA says people with Medicare Part D having trouble getting their psychiatric medications. Also, discussion of the "donut hole."

Okay, so you pose an ethical toughie and people comment and then you say that there is no point talking about it since, in the real world, if a trolley car was coming down the track people would panic and not act based on thought or reason. I can buy that part, but even though that may be true, it is still worth the time to think about how you might act because it is worth thinking about whether or not there is a better choice. One may not be in a position to actually make that choice but is action A morally superior to action B if you did have your wits about you and could choose? It really comes down to a question of whether it is ever okay to sacrifice an individual for the greater good. Assuming some people would say that in some cases it is, does just anybody have the authority to make that decision? The trolley question was never really meant to be answered as though one was standing there and the trolley was actually coming so to say that there would be no time to think is a cop out.